Empathy Week — Year 2 — what I’ve learnt
Teaching changed me. As a 22 year old, fresh out of university, I was placed in a large comprehensive in North London — starting out on my TeachFirst journey. Seemingly overnight, I became a teacher, a role model, a social worker, negotiator, psychologist, presenter, law enforcement and scarily — in loco parentis to students. Some whom were only 4 years my junior.
I will never do a harder job in my life than teaching. Fact.
Which other job requires you to prepare 21 hour long, different presentations (a week) that are to be delivered to over 200 people who may decide to interrupt, spit gum out, turn up late, not turn up at all, ask to go to the loo, punch their neighbour, shout at their friend and tell you you’re a rubbish teacher? Oh and if you’re a science teacher, add in all of those people having roaring bunsen burners to hand (twice the heat of your oven) — carnage.
If you make it to the weekend in one piece then you’ll probably have to work half a day at least to get ready for another 21 presentations. No wonder there are long summer holidays…
I’ll keep saying this — teaching is one of the best jobs in the world but is also one of the hardest.
We often hear students being spoken about as a collective, as just a ‘group of children’ but they’re not. Possibly the biggest mistake I made starting as a teacher was that kids from the same area would be pretty much the same. I forgot to see through the noise and pay attention to their likes and dislikes, what they love and what they hate, what their passions are and aspirations are — also discovering they didn’t have any was just as important. When I did pay attention to the individual, my teaching changed, my students changed.
I realised that no one would learn anything in my class if they did not feel valued, listened to and important. I managed to keep my patience and never shouted — down to one simple realisation and rule that I still swear by:
“There is always a reason for behaviour but never an excuse.”
I had to remind myself whilst teaching that there is a reason ‘Marcus’ has punched another lad, it doesn’t excuse the action but there is a reason and my job as a teacher is to understand that reason. Crucially, form the understanding before taking any action. It was this mindset that allowed me to engage at the right tone and build rapport with students. I didn’t realise it at the time but I was deploying empathy.
The more I listened, the more questions I asked, the greater the amount of time I gave to students to voice their thoughts, the greater my ability was to empathise. Not only with students who reminded me of myself but also with students that were a world away from the one I knew at their age.
Through empathy I built their trust and with that trust came the ability to help build empathy within them. The ability to help develop students into better citizens and most importantly make them feel loved, important and valued.
It is my teaching years that has propelled the movement of Empathy Week forward. An understanding that teachers need help to burst the bubble that their students live in and widen their horizons. There is a huge need to empower students, give them agency and provide opportunities to tackle the causes they care about in society, either at a local or global level. They believe they can make the difference so why aren’t we providing the platform?
Here are my 5 lessons from developing and producing Empathy Week for a second year and my vision for the future:
- The clarity of the problem
Before Empathy Week 2020 I was swamped by the enormity of putting together 5 films, resources and an action project. I didn’t know if what I had envisaged would be as well received as I thought it should be — luckily it was and it gave me a renewed clarity about the problems we are tackling and the relevance of them to different groups of people.
Students —are leaving school without the level of leadership/empathy/life skills necessary to navigate and understand the world and people in it. An issue when you enter the working world and realise your new work colleagues don’t care how well you did in your exams. They want you to be able to communicate effectively, take initiative and problem solve. Whether you agree with their personal beliefs or not, you have to be able to work effectively with everyone.
Teachers — want to develop their students into active, empathetic, confident world citizens that benefit the society that they’re in but have crushing limitations on their time and energy in order to do so effectively.
Schools — have a duty of care and responsibility to develop ‘the whole child’ beyond academic success but often lack funding, time and resources to do so in an engaging way that students enjoy and teachers buy into.
(Beyond schools) Everyone — we all live in our own bubbles, both online and off. It’s hard to develop our empathy when surrounded by people that are like us, people who share our own views. We all need a way to engage and have contact with others who we may never otherwise meet. That is the power of film.
The solution — Empathy Week
Using 5 powerful films each year that focus on the real lives of humans you’ve never heard of enables us to grab the attention and engage with young people from the start. Edutainment is a thing!
By capturing the interest of young people about issues that are often not given the airtime they deserve, we are giving permission and space for young people to not only empathise with others but also with themselves. Many issues students see in the films will also resonate with them. Paired with fully differentiated and guided lesson activities, the whole programme supports the development of 5 key integrative empathy skills. All whilst alleviating teachers and schools of the time constraints and resourcing needed to make such a programme.
At the end of the week we launch the ‘Empathy Action Project’ allowing students to innovate and test solutions to the problems in the world they’re passionate to change. The best projects from across the world are then recognised and celebrated at the Global Empathy Awards in June 2021.
To top it off, we make the programme completely free to all government and state schools across the world.
Why?
Because leadership, empathy, resilience workshops/training and education programmes have been, up until now, largely for the wealthy.
If we are to really truly stand by our mission to build the #EmpathyGeneration then that must involve every child, everywhere. Making it free to government/state schools removes the most complex of barriers — it’s that simple.
(Side note — I’m still unsure if this is business suicide — with people associating ‘Free’ with ‘not high quality’. This blog, in some respects, serves as a time capsule that I can revisit in a couple of years and will answer that concern.)
2) Collaboration = greater impact
There is still so much I want to do and improve about Empathy Week. I’m aware of not offering everything we want to this year — including translating the materials into different languages and having a solid special educational needs differentiated offer (though all resources can be freely adapted by teachers if they really wanted to).
However, this has been a monumental year for collaboration.
We’ve partnered with Empathic Intervision to include the 5 Integrative empathy skills into the framework of the lessons at all age ranges — ensuring there is a science backed approach to developing empathy.
We’ve also continued to partner with Youth Sport Trust who are creating physical education resources to support and align with the 5 days and themes of Empathy Week. As well as still having delivery partners and supporters in Tes, Thought Box Education and SSAT.
Excitingly, this year we’ve partnered with Teach For All and formed a community of International Empathy Week Teacher Ambassadors, 18 of them from 5 continents and across 11 countries including the UK, India, Nepal, Ecuador, Brasil, USA, Mexico, Vietnam, Nigeria, Uganda and Lebanon.
Check out our #EmpathyConnected series on twitter to hear directly from them and their students.
3) Rome wasn’t built in a day
…as the old famous saying goes.
I’ve decided to settle with being patiently impatient instead.
I know the #EmpathyGeneration will take time to build but it is needed now. Student’s need to have the space, opportunity and agency to change the world today, not tomorrow. We’ve seen that Gen Z is the most socially aware generation in modern times yet our education systems across the world is crippling passion, purpose and creativity with exam-focused school calendars.
Imagine if a child found their value in using empathy to innovate solutions to the world’s issues rather than an exam at the end of the year
As a trained teacher I know that we also ‘dumb down’ the abilities, ideas and creativity of students from a young age. Empathy Week is that opportunity for the child not good at maths (me) but passionate about changing the world, to know that they do have something brilliant inside of them. That they can achieve great things.
I’ve learnt this year to accept the process, keep building momentum and one day every child in the world will get an opportunity to take part in Empathy Week, be empowered to take action, and become an empathic leader.
4) Empathy Week is a trojan horse for positive mental health
‘Wellbeing’ is an overused word in education. I believe students and staff alike are a bit sick of it being used — mainly because some programmes become too targeted at always addressing how to be mentally well without providing real world, tangible actions for young people to take part in. This is an issue.
This year I’ve been lucky enough to join the Zinc Mental Health Academy, a collection of purpose-driven individuals all impacting the mental health space (or trying to)! It’s through our talks, speaker series and the fantastic guidance of Iain Jordan and Gregor Henderson that I’ve realised I’ve always looked at mental health through a negative lens. Very rarely do we speak about mental health in a positive light, there always seems to be an angle of overcoming negativity and ‘dealing’ with issues we have rather than just talking about positive mental health from the get-go.
I’ve learnt that Empathy Week is a trojan horse for mental wellbeing — helping young people to thrive.
It’s an opportunity for young people to have agency (that word has become so important) over their own school, local and global community. To learn about other people’s world but then have the opportunity as well as freedom, to take on an ‘Empathy Action Project’.
By empowering young people across the world to innovate solutions to social issues that also affect them, we are harnessing purpose, passion, connection and meaning. That is positive mental health.
5) The number 65
Sixty-five — a number that is now intertwined with the vision.
65 is the number of films and humans a child will watch if they take part in Empathy Week when they first start school aged 5 to the age of 18 when they go off into further education or work. 65 different people, each with their own different cultures, opinions, faiths, ideas, upbringings, personalities and quirks. It’s a 13 year journey but one that I believe can truly change a child.
It represents the very core of the long-term vision of building the #EmpathyGeneration. To better the world we must first start by trying to understand the people within it. We can only have a hope of understanding people different to ourselves if we are exposed to them, I’m a huge believer in contact theory.
With Empathy Week, a child can now meet humans they would never otherwise have met thanks to the power of film. They have a chance to put the context of someone else into their own and have a greater, more powerful understanding of life.
They will have greater understanding of the social issues someone else faces and be given permission to talk about them and the effect these have on their own lives too. Ultimately, furthering the empathy and understanding between students as well as teachers in a classroom.
Into 2021 and beyond…
Empathy Week was born out of a purpose to develop young people into empathetic leaders and build the skills they need to navigate the world whilst creating a movement to ensure that the world is one of mutual understanding.
Crucially, we do not wish to make everyone friends. We don’t want everyone to agree on everything. We do not expect everyone to become ‘woke’. Empathising with someone is about understanding them. Not pitying, not agreeing or disagreeing — but seeking to understand.
Empathy is vitally important but it is not the answer to everything. We are aware that empathy-burnout is dangerous. A child-carer who looks after their parent does not need to be told to go and change the world when they get to school.
Our mission is simple — develop the skill of empathy and leadership in young people.
How we do it will certainly be changed and adapted with technology over the decades to come, but our focus to build the #EmpathyGeneration will not.
Follow the Empathy Week journey across social — LinkedIn / Instagram / Twitter / Facebook
Are you a teacher or connected to a school? — Download our Schools brochure for 2021
Interested in partnering or sponsoring Empathy Week 2021 — Contact us
Behind the scenes of Empathy Week 2021 filming
“To change the world you must first understand the people in it.”
